The Neville Chamberlain Award

      This is a short excerpt from Robert Reich’s excellent Substack. For the full post or to subscribe, on paid or free plans, click here.

       The Neville Chamberlain Award is given to the most cowardly effort to appease a tyrant.

      Last week’s original winners had been Shari Redstone and Paramount, for intruding on the editorial independence of “60 Minutes” in order to suck up to Trump, so he’d settle his frivolous lawsuit against CBS—thereby allowing them to sell off a chunk of CBS for billions.

      But the bigger winner is now Jeff Bezos.

      It was reported that Bezos’s Amazon planned to alert consumers to how much more they’ll be paying for all sorts of items because of Trump’s tariffs.

      This infuriated Trump, whose White House spokes-lackey promptly accused Amazon of being “hostile and political.” Then Trump chewed out Bezos on the phone.

      So, Bezos kissed Trump’s tuchus and withdrew the plan.

      It was a full Chamberlain, occurring over just a few hours—simultaneously shafting consumers who deserve to know how much Trump’s tariffs are costing them; adding to Trump’s lie that American consumers don’t pay the tariffs; and further corrupting American business, since Amazon is being sued by the FTC for monopolizing and Bezos clearly will do anything Trump wants.

      Is there a word worse than disgraceful?